Electrical connectors attachable to ends of wires are well known. Typically in the older prior art, a terminal connector is attached to a wire as by soldering or welding at a single point. A concern with single-point soldering or welding is that electrical continuity depends upon the reliability of a single point of contact which, if weakened, can lead to higher resistance and, if broken, results in an open circuit. In the more recent prior art, a terminal may be multiply-wrapped with the wire to be attached and may be soldered, or preferably welded, to the terminal at a plurality of sites which results in a plurality of contact points and places less stress on the first wrap due to the geometry of the weld.
In the art of welding a multiply-wrapped terminal, and especially when using wire having a high-temperature rated insulative covering, it is known to provide a metal sleeve over the wire wrappings prior to welding, and to then resistance-weld the sleeve and wires together to the terminal. This method can be highly successful but requires a separate sleeve that is difficult to place and hold on the wrapped terminal during welding and typically requires the use of automated cameras to ensure that the sleeve is placed in the correct location on the terminal prior to welding.
What is needed in the art is a means for eliminating a loose sleeve from the welding process.
What is further needed in the art is a means for ensuring automatically that a weld site is configured correctly prior to welding.
It is a principal object of the present invention to provide an improved method and apparatus for forming a multiply-wrapped welded connector terminal having the same attributes as a prior art sleeved welding but without the requirement to position and hold a loose sleeve in place during the welding operation.